Navigating cultural differences in global teams can be a daunting challenge, triggering misunderstandings, inefficiencies, and even conflict. However, cultural intelligence empowers leaders to bridge these divides fostering mutual understanding, collaboration, and innovation.
In episode 20 of the Leaders People Love series, Dr. Catherine Wu, a Cultural Intelligence Evangelist, explores the transformative power of mastering cultural intelligence in leadership. She unravels the intricacies of becoming an interculturalist, unveiling essential keys to cultivating harmony within diverse work environments.
Connect with Catherine Wu at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drcatherinewu/
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TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Catherine: it’s not about just teaching people how to communicate better, it’s to help them recognize that in certain circumstances, people will have different ways to share similar messages. And generally the main differences we see between culture is when you have to deliver a message that has the potential to hurt people’s feelings.
So any message that has a potential of hurting people’s feelings will be delivered very differently across cultures, depending on people’s tolerance for straining relationships.
Chuen Chuen: Welcome to agile leaders conversations. This is a podcast where we invite human center professionals and leaders to share what it means to lead in today’s workplaces. From the personal story is find out the greatest learning that guides him through disruption and forge a better way forward. Their insights will maximize their leadership potential and unlock possibilities for better future. My name is Yeo Chuen Chuen I’m the author of leaders people love. A guide for agile leaders to creating great workplaces and happy employees. I’m delighted to have you listen in today. My guest today is Dr. Catherine Wu Dr Catherine is a thought leader on global leadership and interculturalism. A passionate advocate for cultural diversity,
she’s on a mission to inspire 10 million interculturalists to connect cultures and speak up for diversity.
Welcome to the show. Dr. Catherine. Tell us about yourself, what you do and why you do what you do.
Dr. Catherine: I’m a cultural intelligence evangelist. Okay, what’s an evangelist? An evangelist is somebody who tell the world about something to get people to adopt new ideas.
In technology, evangelists are people who go and drive adoption of new technology. Me, I’m driving the adoption of a skill that we call cultural intelligence.
Why do I do what I do? We are all interculturalist. According to the world migration report, there are 280 million people who live outside of their home country.
People like me, I’m French and I live in Singapore. And so many of these people, are interacting with people in a new country. Imagine we interact with 10 people every day. That makes 2. 8 billion interculturalists.
Now, 3 billion interculturalists, this is 35 percent of the world population. One third of the population is an interculturalist. And yet, most people don’t even realize how culture bring us together, but also take us apart.
So I’m doing what I do because I want to bring more people together and help them understand each other more.
Chuen Chuen: Bringing people together and help them understand each other more, increasing the common ground, right? You’re saying 35 percent of the population on earth have the potential to become interculturalists.
Dr. Catherine: That’s right.
Chuen Chuen: Wow. Okay, the theme of this podcast about leaders people love, right? It’s a very subjective notion as well. So from your expertise on cultural intelligence, how do you describe a leader people love?
Dr. Catherine: In cultural intelligence, first I want to say it’s a business topic. The way we measure the impact of cultural intelligence is in two ways. Can you get things done? And can you build relationships that last you, your team, your clients, your partnerships.
So a leader people love to me in the context of multicultural teams and globalization is someone who irrespective of their own cultural upbringing can get the trust and the recognition of anyone irrespective of where they come from.
So I can give you an example. A few years ago I met one leader and he has become, a role model for culturally intelligent leadership.
So he worked for a very large American company but he’s Indian, and he lives in the Middle East. He was hired as a global head for human resource management. The company wanted to move him to the U.S. And he didn’t want to relocate to America. So he said why don’t I try to build a remote team? And this had never been done in this organization.
He said if I fail, then I move to the U.S. The team had people from Australia, Singapore, China, India, Europe. And the challenge when you work with remote teams is that everybody remains within their own cultural environment.
But because this leader was already so experienced with this teams. He built this system in his team where every few months they will have a meeting and then everybody will talk about their culture. In your culture. How do you communicate when you have a conflict with the boss? Why does being on time mean in your culture? How do you disagree with your colleague? And then they will move to, okay, now we understand each other , why do we exist as a team? What brings you here?
Now, there were many reasons why that team was existing. But one reason was because this manager has challenged his boss to say that he was capable of building a completely remote team team. And by being remote, it allow everybody to remain within the country and maintain their own life without having to relocate.
So in terms of, financial opportunities, you can keep your job, you don’t have to move to another part of the world.
This was happening before COVID. At a time where very few teams were actually remote. If you’re not in the tech industry, then they wouldn’t have so many teams like this.
And I invited him to speak in one of my classes. And he joined remotely via Zoom. And he invited his collaborator from Singapore to come and speak also. And after he was gone, the collaborator stayed with me. And all she had to say was positive things.
So when you talk about leaders, people love in that multicultural context is somebody who is really making an effort to make sure that despite our differences we also recognize our similarities and then we build something that works for all of us.
Chuen Chuen: So powerful. Despite our differences, there are also similarities. So we build something that works for all of us. It’s not you adapt to me. I adapt to you.
Dr. Catherine: That’s right.
Chuen Chuen: Teaching others to understand how we communicate?
Dr. Catherine: I give you an example. Some time ago I had this session with a company. And I asked people this question, when I disagreed with the boss, this is what I do.
And people will give me answer Oh, when I disagree with the boss, I will go to the boss and I would ask why the boss think this way or that way so I can really understand why the boss is saying this or that, and then I will explain my reason and I will listen. And then hopefully the boss will try to understand me. But in the end, if the boss stick with his opinion, then I will just agree with the boss.
So it was just a few of these answers from all over Southeast Asia. So we talking about Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia India and so on.
And after that session, I had a call with the head of global talent who was based in Israel. And she told me, wow, my mind was blown. Looking at these answers, I was so surprised. Because In my culture, if I disagree with the boss, I just tell the boss I disagree with them. And then argue for my point.
So it’s not about just teaching people how to communicate better, it’s to help them recognize that in certain circumstances, people will have different ways to share similar messages. And generally the main differences we see between culture is when you have to deliver a message that has the potential to hurt people’s feelings.
So any message that has a potential of hurting people’s feelings will be delivered very differently across cultures, depending on people’s tolerance for straining relationships.
So culture that usually value relationship very highly, we call them collectivistic cultures.
I remember I had German friend, and she was working for a local organization. Her boss was Singaporean and she would go to her boss and she will tell him you know this is a terrible idea.
Dr. Catherine: She would say, I know you’re going to make a mistake. I see it coming. It would be wrong of me to let you go the wrong path. So truth was more important than feelings. For her, she felt like even if your feelings are hurt, you can get over that. It’s easier to get over your bad feelings than for you to go into the wrong direction and make a mistake.
So when we talk about teams and multicultural teams, it’s not just about teaching people how to communicate with each other. I think at first is to be at that level of understanding and to a certain level, empathy.
It’s about recognizing that not everything is comfortable for everyone. And then when it comes to a multicultural team is negotiating a space where we can create the conditions for people to communicate more efficiently.
When we talk about intercultural, multicultural communication in global teams is also about recognizing that everybody has different needs. And instead of forcing people to adapt to you because you like to speak up whenever you feel like it. Is to recognize that actually you cannot satisfy everyone. So instead, create systems that allow the communication to flow for the best possible outcome.
The goal in the end is not to impose one culture on another. The goal in the end is to function to the best possible ways, to extract the best ideas, to increase efficiency and speed and all the things that in the end matters for the team beyond their own cultural preferences.
Chuen Chuen: Understand. So what I’m hearing is it is the system, right? And we are building something that works for everyone. And what this something looks like is different from team to team. Company to company. So it’s the process of Okay. What kind of topics do we need to talk about?
Conflict is great because in my work, we talk about conflict management. Yeah. And you’re right, in our culture, we are more conflict averse. We don’t always speak what’s on our mind directly. If it’s praises, it’s easier to be direct, but if it’s criticism is harder.
So I see where that level of understanding of each culture’s mental models and empathy to want to understand is a big part.
Can I also say building trust is the precursor to all these because, I’m imagining this. Let’s say I’m a global leader. Okay. And I have a multicultural team. And day one. Hi, everybody. I’m your new manager. Let’s talk about how we all manage or respond to conflict.
Is this kind of too fast, too dark kind of style? And how can the listeners today equip themselves with some basic skills so that they build trust more effectively.
Dr. Catherine: I would say is the reverse. Trust is a result of setting up the systems. Because when you intentionally go into your team as a leader and you say, okay, now we are going to speak in turn so that everybody gets to share their ideas. You want them to come in. Even the ones who will be more comfortable sharing, they also recognize that, you are somebody who is interested in hearing everyone else. So I think trust is a result of your actions and your behaviors.
Trust is also built through how you relate to everyone individually.
So recently there was some research done by researchers at MIT called the bamboo ceiling. So it’s this idea that In North America, in the U. S., the number of CEOs from East Asian backgrounds are much lower than people from South Asian background. Even though as minority groups in the U. S., they are represented equally when they graduate from universities, law schools, MBAs, and so on.
So the question is, why is it that East Asians find it harder to climb the ladder? There are different reasons. And some of them are systemic and stereotypes . But there’s also one reason that is really interesting. It has to do with who do you network with? Who are your friends? Who do you have lunch with?
I like to say the cultural intelligence of an organization. You can see it by the company restaurants at lunch, and see who sits with who. When you hang out with people who are like you, culturally similar.
As you progress through ladder. You do two things. One is you fail to develop your cross cultural skills. You only learn to socialize with people who are similar to you. So you miss an opportunity to learn to communicate with people who are very different. The second thing is you send a message to people who are different from you, that you’re the kind of leader who only cares for one group of people.
How people see you and in a diverse, globalized environment, people want to see a leader who does not necessarily look like them, but they want to see a leader who cares about them. And how people decide that you care about them is by looking at who do you spend the most time with?
If you have a leader who is a male and always hang out with male and go golfing on the weekend. If you are a woman in the team and you see that leader, I have no chance. But if you are a leader who mentor women and push them and all of that. It’s a different story. And it’s the same for culture.
If you are one particular race or one particular nationality, and we see you with people who are like you, then how do I know you will care about me?
Chuen Chuen: When you were saying. We build what is similar, right? But yet, there are certain cultures that are so different. What if we cannot find similarities?
In my coaching practice, this is one fundamental thing we believe in. Everyone wants to be seen, heard, and understood. And that, I believe, would be the common denominator. Which then means that, when you talk about, It’s so important who you network with. Who you choose to have lunch with. Who are you seen hanging out most often with. And that’s so intentional, right? What kind of message are we sending?
And the second is very fundamental skills like listening. Being curious.
Unfortunately, for many of us, when we are brought up in relatively competitive cultures, we encourage people to speak up. How many times have we received comments from bosses that, to advance in your career, you need to be visible, you need to speak up more.
And for some reason, then people start talking too much and they don’t listen. I find it so ironical that if I have to train a group of senior executives how to listen. Because it’s like, it’s not just listening on the surface level. So even basic skills, listening can make a huge difference.
Dr. Catherine: So listening, when it comes to global leadership and cultural intelligence, the goal is to engage other people. We cannot change other people, how they feel, what they think. They themselves can only change themselves, but we can change the way people perceive us and see us.
So listening is clearly an important skill as a global leader. Also because, the fundamental idea behind listening is to say that I should not assume that I know, and then I should give people the space to explain, their side so that I don’t jump to conclusion too quickly.
And this is one of the quality of cultural intelligence. Is about not assuming, suspending judgments, and always verifying your assumptions and expectations. Because when it comes to crossing cultures, it’s very easy to misunderstand and misconstrue some behaviors.
I often give the example in my MBA classes. I have lots of students who come from India and from Japan. And if you have seen how Indians and Japanese work with each other, they have very different norms.
And generally, the Indians are very driven and motivated. And their way of communication is about demonstrating that you care and you are motivated by talking and throwing out ideas. It’s like this bartering and arguing.
The Japanese is completely different. For them, the idea is you show respect by listening exactly what you describe. You listen and you don’t just listen to the words. And then to the silence. after they have stopped talking to be sure that they really have nothing left to say.
This listening to the silence is something that I learned when I came to Asia, even like in China, I experienced this. That was so new. The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with either side. If you are with people who are like you with your culture, and it works for you, then so be it, right?
Of course, you can change it if you don’t like it. But I think it’s recognizing that within your own culture, it’s okay. The problem is when you cross cultures, the same behavior will have very different meaning.
So imagine the Indian students after this, like bantering and arguing the Japanese students just sat there quietly saying nothing. They have nothing to contribute. So the judgments are negative because we benchmark our idea of what’s professional and competent based on what we know, what we have been told in our culture.
Now, if you put yourself in the shoes of the Japanese. They sat there looking at the groups of students from India, just, arguing and interrupting each other, waiting for them to be done, so they could say their piece. They walk away thinking, wow, they didn’t even give us any space to share our ideas. They don’t care about us, right?
So when you say, we need to teach people to listen more. I don’t know. Some cultures are really good at listening. I think we need to show people, leaders need to really start thinking also questioning is my style of my expectations align with the expectation of others? So sometimes more listening can help, but some of the time people also need to learn to speak up. It really depends on the context.
Chuen Chuen: So they need to learn to jump in as well, right? So back to the shared space.
Dr. Catherine: Yes. But the thing is, I don’t believe they can learn so easily to jump in. And if you think about it, it’s like the difference between multicultural and intercultural.
If you think of a multicultural society or multicultural organization, is different groups of people from different cultures, different backgrounds who can do their own thing, and they are treated equally. The norms and the rules apply equally to everyone. But that’s it.
And if you leave people on their own, they always go back to what’s most instinctive and most comfortable for humans, which is to be closer to what’s familiar and similar.
We are in a multicultural framework. We are saying eventually, one group will have to assimilate to the other, adapt to the other. And usually it’s about who has the most power in the group. And usually the power of either the size you are more or the power of the loudest ,who speak the most, right?
But this not the interculturalist model. The interculturalist model is you have those different ways of communication, but you recognize that you have to work together. And your goal is to do a project or achieve a certain goal, right? And you have no choice. You have to work with each other.
How are you going to negotiate your differences so that everybody is comfortable enough? You have to now to recognize that we all have different needs and different preference together.
How can we agree on a system, on a process for us to work with each other? So it’s like maybe thinking of a way for the Japanese to signal that they have something to say. They can have a sign. They can do something that the Indians recognize as a signal.
It’s like negotiating a space for dialogue so we can co create an environment that works for everyone.
And my first example of this manager who had built this remote team that never met. They all think, he had told me they meet in person once every two or three years. But the team could function very well because they had designed that space together.
There are many models out there, but to just pick elements of our collaboration that matters to us and to the way we work together that we feel could be problematic or caused conflict and learn a lesson with curiosity, and start recognizing the differences and then discuss and say, okay. This is not working. We need to find a better way. How do we create that better way, but it takes awareness and intentionality to do this.
And usually I’ve seen it done by leaders who are very experienced cross cultural leaders, people who have been out there and have led global teams and diverse teams. And they are very good at pinpointing very subtle differences. And they can approach them very pragmatically and very directly and intentionally. One that I find fascinating is a story of Netflix.
So Netflix had this culture of candid feedback. If you have something to say, you just say. And Netflix thought, our culture really led to our success in America. We want to bring it to Asia. So they come to Singapore, Japan. And they say, if you have something to say, you just say, even to your boss.
And as you can predict, that didn’t work so well. Nobody said anything. Because you can encourage them as much as you want. This is not how you build trust. In some culture it may work, but in this part of the world that’s not how it works.
So instead, what they did is they look at what are some of the characteristics of the culture. And in Japan, for example, and they say people are very diligent, very hardworking. And when they are asked to do something, they always do it .And they do it well.
But what they don’t like is when things are done on the spot without preparation. And when they have to talk to a person. So instead of doing this candid feedback meeting where randomly at any time of the day, you could be asked by your manager, just tell me your feedback. Instead they change it.
They say, giving feedback now is part of your job. Every Wednesday at 10 AM, we’re going to have this team meeting where everybody is expected to provide feedback.
They had time to prepare how to say it. And so in the end, feedback that they received from people in Singapore, people in Japan was of higher quality than they would receive in other parts of the world when the feedback was on the spot.
But this was only possible because they were able to integrate a culture that came from elsewhere. And they wanted to retain the candid feedback with very local and a deep understanding of the local values and realities and the thing that really matters to the local people. And when you integrated this, they actually got a much better result.
So I think this is a combination of this awareness, that they are cultural differences and then you go and find out more, which is not that difficult. Once you have the awareness, it’s not difficult to learn about cultural differences. And then the intentionality of building around a system that works for everyone.
Chuen Chuen: So awareness of the culture, and then build a system intentionally instead of adaptation. We are not changing anybody, but we are building a system that is sustainable.
Dr. Catherine: That’s right. And sometimes it’s about leveraging on the good side. We call that uncertainty avoidance when people don’t like ambiguity, they like plans, being organized and prepared, minimizing, the flexibility.
I do this exercise in class we call certainty avoidance. People who are very comfortable with who wants rules and clear instructions and detailed guidelines versus people who are flexible, go with the flow.
And I usually ask people what are the advantages and disadvantages of both sides? And I remember once I overheard a conversation. I don’t see any benefits of low in a certainty avoidance. I don’t see any benefits in being that so flexible.
But actually after the discussion, she actually started to see, Oh, okay. Maybe there is some value in being a little bit more flexible and adaptable. Now in the team, if you have people who show these two qualities, some people to plan everything, have deadlines and intermediary deadlines and contingency plans.
Dr. Catherine: it’s easy to see the downside the when you have a preference, other people more negatively because they are different from you.
But in reality, we need both strengths. And the question is not about, who should adapt to who? The question is, what are we trying to do together? And do we need these two sides? And if that’s the case, then we need to learn to work with these people who are so different from us. What are we trying to achieve?
And it’s this higher goal, is like called integration. And that’s what I mean when I say we need to create that space where we can find a way to align our way of working so that we can achieve that higher goal. And that’s why we found in research that when leaders, managers have high cultural intelligence, the psychological safety in their teams is higher.
Chuen Chuen: Yeah. So as you were describing, I was thinking, huh, this is something similar with my leaders, right? One to one. I tend to think of this as mental flexibility or your agility in your thinking.
Often I approach their development from a strength ‘s assessment first. And there are some strengths profile that says it’s that one, two, three, four, five very structured. And then there are those that are like, Oh, totally flexible. And the plans change so quickly, but do we need to find middle ground or not?
Do we need to bring up certain parts and demonstrate the agility? It depends on what we’re trying to achieve, right? And whether the environment or us exercising our preference on a certain operating mode. Is it useful and beneficial for the team or not? And if not, then we have to adjust and be able to change.
And I believe in that neuroplasticity, right? We may be wired to be very structured beings, but there’s always a joy or possibility and discovery and going with the flow. Okay, I’m saying from my own perspective, because my disc profile, I’m high D and high C. So I’m extremely structured.
Dr. Catherine: I see that.
Chuen Chuen: Continuously have to cultivate that sense of spontaneity and go with the flow. Don’t be so attached, it’s a long thing and working, I think the greatest gift I received ever since I changed my career from teaching to what I do today is access to global coachees, and I learn from them and how they see the world, their narrative.
It’s a narrative that I’m coaching, right? It was very interesting at a time, especially I was coaching virtually during COVID. So in a day, I might literally travel around the world, so I’ll have Singapore, China, Germany Middle East, then you can see people’s response to the daily numbers.
So different and their level of optimism, how they handle stress, and their perception of, is there hope in the future and how they bounce back, so different. And I think that was the period where I grew the most.
I love the distinction between multiculturalism and interculturalism. I have picked up these four steps, but I don’t know whether it’s correct.
Number one, pick a model, maybe the culture map, meaning the book.
Dr. Catherine: Any model. It’s not so much about the model is just to say, Okay, let’s talk about feedback. How do you give feedback in your culture?
Chuen Chuen: Yeah.
Dr. Catherine: And if you have five people around the table, you’re going to have five answers.
I think it’s about stimulating what you just described. When you say, Oh, I talked to this coachee from the Middle East and this one from China, and they have such different ways to see the same problem. So models don’t really matter. What’s important. Just speak one topic or two topic that is really important for a team. It’s about educating yourself to recognize how different we are.
So yes, pick a model, a few elements that matter to the functioning of your team and get people to share, how they see it from their own cultural perspective.
Chuen Chuen: Sure. And then create the system, processes and includes your team routines, right? You are then the steward of the routine, right? What gets measured changes behavior. When you say this routine is important and you uphold it, people trust you. And then you are the holder of the inclusive space.
Dr. Catherine: And it’s a commitment, right? It’s a commitment to enforce the routine and to keep it until it becomes so natural that people do it without any external intervention.
Chuen Chuen: So what I’m also noticing is when you talk about interculturalism, it’s not East versus West. It’s the East within the East. And when we talk about the Indian culture per se, actually within India itself, it’s so diverse. So much more to understand.
Okay. I want to segue into this question on culture fit. How should hiring managers of global organizations today look at what a good fit means?
Dr. Catherine: I think a good fit is the one that would get you to the goal that you have for your business and your organization.
Naturally, we are inclined to feel comfortable around people who are more similar to us. One model, you hire people because they feel like you, they look like you, maybe, they have experience in your country. So that would be one example.
Then you have other companies who will hire locally because they will think that would be the best way to get to the local market. For them, the fit is not so much the fit of the corporate culture in that sense, but the fit is a market fit. So that will be another model.
The last model is a Netflix model. We are not fully adapting to the local culture. We are not localizing everything versus we are not just hiring people who are like us because sometimes it’s just not possible.
Fit depends on what’s the end goal. But the reality, especially in cross cultural adaptation is, it’s never that simple and you cannot do this. And even If you don’t have to deal with different cultures, you will still have different personalities and different groups.
I think what’s really important is to know why you are hiring that person for, and what do they bring to the table that wasn’t there before.
Chuen Chuen: Or even defining what does fit mean.
Dr. Catherine: So when people talk to me about fit, I will also ask them why are you worrying about fit? Fit into what, right? So for me, that’s also an idea that if you already think of the word fit, I see this as also a bias that you have an idea of a prototype that needs to fit in. It’s like a box and you need to find whatever fit into that box. And that itself is a form of bias.
Chuen Chuen: So I imagine then, if a manager has a routine, a process in place that allows a cross cultural team to function, the fit might be someone who can be a team player as in adhere to the process, respect the norms of this organization.
Dr. Catherine: Yeah, actually, that’s a good point. And It depends on what you do, what’s your goal. Is the diversity of your team. If it’s a legal requirement because there are some quotas and all of this, okay, fine, do it.
But if it’s up to you, why would you want that? Because naturally leading a multicultural team, it’s going to be more challenging, not just between you and your team, but even you have to manage the relationship between the different team members. And so you need to also elevate your leadership from being a culturally intelligent leader who can adapt to individuals into a leader who can also manage those relationship within the team.
So you only recruit a multicultural team if it makes sense for what you’re trying to do, or if there’s a talent shortage and you don’t have a choice, but you have to hire internationally to get the talents that you need. Because it will be more challenging than to manage people who are all the same for sure.
Chuen Chuen: It’s a test of your agility as a leader, whether you can lead across contexts very effectively.
A leader who wants to become an interculturalist starting from today, what are the actions you recommend?
Dr. Catherine: First of all, I would say look around you and look at how many people who are different from you do you interact with on a daily basis. Among your colleagues, friends people in your community. That alone is already making you an interculturalist.
Even if you never think of culture, but you are already interacting with people from different cultures, you are already an interculturalist. So then the question is, what do you do when you are surrounded by these people?
Do you feel like, Oh, I’m curious, I’m interested, but I still feel very challenged. It’s very uncomfortable. So sometimes I’ll just go back to my comfort zone. Or do you feel like it’s very easy for me to talk to all these people?
Culturally intelligent people don’t know they have cultural intelligence. They don’t know it, they just do it.
If you think of your career, Chuen, you have clients from all around the world. And those clients, they come back, they sign again, then you have cultural intelligence. You are able to build relationships with people from different cultures. That makes you a culturally intelligent leader.
Maybe to your listeners who want to know how do I become cultural intelligence global leader? I say first, maybe you already are, and you just don’t know.
Because cultural intelligence is a skill. And, we may have a model that describes what culturally intelligent people do, but a model is just a reflection of something that exists out there in the world.
Now, I call this level three of interculturalism is the leader who adapt well, build good relationship, get things done.
Then the next question is, can you take this experience intuitively. This thing that you’re not so sure how you do, but you do well. Are you able to translate it into something that you can teach other people, that you can use to educate and inspire others around you. Because the role of a leader is not just to do well.
The role of the leader is to develop others, to influence others, to grow their potential, to do the best they can be, right? As a leader, we have a responsibility to build the next generation. If anything, to build our replacement.
Succession planning is also very important. So if you are this kind of leader who can lead multicultural team, and you do it super well, but your people, they don’t walk away from working with you as a more culturally intelligent person, then you have failed as a leader.
So what I encourage you to do very simply, even if you don’t know any model, any theory and this kind of thing, Tell your stories.
Your example that you describe about, when I coach people from the Middle East, from China, their level of happiness or hope about the future, all these things is different. Tell these stories. Tell the difference you have noticed.
Because when you tell these stories, I learned from you. Other people learn from you. Tell your stories, your observation so that you can inspire, and change the mindset of other people who follow you.
And then they will become interested to learn more.
Chuen Chuen: Wow! Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m picking up. Remember Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker. He has this very famous sentence. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So step one, very easy. Look at who are the five people you spend the most time with. Are they very similar to you? And if you can, intentionally, spend time with people who are dissimilar from you, you have a better chance of developing cultural intelligence, right?
And I love what you’re saying, interculturalists develop more interculturalists. And we do that by storytelling.
And one of the pillars in my book is leadership storytelling. How do you capture your experiences and share about something that you thought perhaps was right for a long time, but you realize, it’s not. And how can you capture that into a story that is legacy that’s passed on because people see certain things, they can never unsee it.
Dr. Catherine: That’s right. And culture is one such thing. I call this, we all go about life thinking that we are the center of our world.
I call it the center of the world syndrome. And that’s why we judge other people by our own cultural yardstick without realizing that it’s our culture that has shaped us to think this way or that way.
And the first time you cross cultures, the first time you work with a client from another culture, suddenly you realize that, wow, everything you have known is only one perspective.
And there are other people who also go about life thinking that their view is everything, is the center of the world syndrome. And it’s very different from your view, right?
That’s why it’s so important for students to go abroad, study abroad, work abroad.
That’s why to be a regional leader or global leader, you need to have had that experience of leading teams in other countries and all of this. Because only when you have that direct experience, you start realizing and you start recognizing that their behavior is nothing wrong with them, but it’s just different cultures.
Chuen Chuen: In my first book, I have this model, Re-Four Model, and first step is to reconstruct the map. And knowing that my perception of what is correct and good is only one version. So it’s my map, right? But your map, other people’s maps are correct from their perspective and they are all true. So when we can converge and bring these together, then we develop a more accurate perspective of what reality is. So I use that to shift perspective, but I see it now, another application is that on the interculturalism.
Dr. Catherine: Yes.
Chuen Chuen: I learned so much about this topic. I can’t wait to dive deeper into this because I believe with the way the workplace is changing right now, especially in Singapore. We have to equip our citizens, our leaders here to become ready global leaders. And there’s so much possibilities and room to stretch and grow and be visible on the world stage. So I can’t wait.
Dr. Catherine: Yes. I can’t wait to be part of this.
Chuen Chuen: To reach your 10 million. Your goal. 10 million interculturalists.
Dr. Catherine: Imagine they only need to grow 10 of them, that would be a hundred million. Yeah. Let’s do step by step.
Chuen Chuen: So good to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time Dr. Catherine.
Dr. Catherine: Thank you very much Chuen Chuen. It was wonderful speaking to you today.
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